Computing plays more of a role in the business world than it ever has before. This article reviews the role of data scientists within that world.
Businesses thrive on information. The more data they can accumulate, the better they understand the market, the target audience, and the goods and services exchanging hands. Most of the information we retrieve through market research is online feedback. The working world exists on the back of a wealth of data, all of which needs processed so that management can understand it. That’s where data science comes in.
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What is Data Science?
Data science is the science of processing and making sense of those huge volumes of data that businesses need to interpret to get ahead of the competition. Without an ongoing study of the data your business receives, you don’t know how to use it or what it all means. A data scientist studies this at university, and then applies their skills to help businesses make sense of, process, and therefore make use of, big data.
Almost all organisations are looking at how they can better use data to power their growth. A data scientist lets them do this. The data scientist works closely with businesses to extrapolate useful information. This usually means anticipating problems ahead of time, better understanding of advertising and how well ads perform, and a greater appreciation of how data powers business.
What Industries Use Data Science?
Data science has become an intrinsic part of many businesses. The industries using them most include:
- Ecommerce
- The government
- Retail
- Manufacturing
- Scientific research
- Financial industries
- Academia
- And the Health sector
There are different types of data scientist depending on what skills they have. The skills are usually industry specific. For example, a data scientist working in finance will have knowledge of software specific to that industry. You might not need to extrapolate stock market data if you work in retail or academics.
How Data Scientists Benefit Business?
Data science benefits businesses in a number of ways. Here are our favourites.
Data Science Predicts Trends in Demand
Since data scientists study past incidents with similarities to current events, it can seriously benefit your business to use that data to predict future events. Extrapolating data from similar past situations means you can predict how much stock to order and prevent shortages. This can also work with supply chain management in logistics, to maintain stock levels and prevent bottlenecks.
Provides Feedback from Customers
Data science provides us with the analytical data about consumer spending that helps us shape our target audience and target our ads at them. It even allows us to streamline those ads based off further analytical data received when we run them. This leads to a greater ROI in your ad spend and a better understanding of your customer persona.
Helps Individual Departments with Tasks
When used in finance departments, data science can retrieve and interpret reports, forecasts, and cash flow trends. When used in sales, it can optimise sales strategy and target marketing campaigns. When used in procurement, it can analyse the better options on a quality versus cost basis. Data science has multiple helpful facets in business. It’s a good time to get in on it at ground level.
